Mohammed Khalaf (Abu Tahrir), from the village of Jatt in the northern Triangle area in occupied Palestine ’48, was released after 12 years in Israeli prisons on Sunday, 24 September. Upon his release, he brought a message from the veteran prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons urging that their issue be taken up as a priority as part of the process of reconciliation and national unity.

B'Tselem Press release: "Israel demolishes school serving 80 children in Jub a-Dib on eve of new school year" (Aug 23, 2017): click here!

The demolition of a school building the night before the start of the year epitomizes the administrative cruelty and systematic harassment by authorities designed to drive Palestinians from their land.

Israeli forces shot and injured Mahmoud Qaddumi, 13, on July 23 near the Israeli separation barrier by the northern West Bank city of Qalqilya, before detaining, interrogating, and attempting to recruit him as an informant.

Palestinian media and human rights groups are calling on the Palestinian Authority to suspend the new “Electronic Crimes” law that critics say is a sweeping attack on the right to free expression and privacy. Meanwhile, an Israeli minister is facing difficulties in his effort to shut down Al Jazeera.

According to international law and Israeli courts no one can be detained for their political opinions. This is affirmed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, article 2, which states that states parties are to ensure “to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth or other status” (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2200A (XXI) of 16 December 1966). However, Palestinian political leaders are routinely arrested and detained as part of an ongoing Israeli effort to suppress Palestinian political processes – and, as a necessary result, political sovereignty and self-determination.

Israeli forces detained Jarrar, a long-serving PLC member from the leftist faction the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), on July 2 after raiding her home in Ramallah in the central West Bank, 13 months after Jarrar was released from Israeli prison on June 3, 2016 after serving more than a year, one month of which was under administrative detention.

Palestinian women prisoners in Damon prison are being subject to harsh sanctions, deprived of family visits and thrown in solitary confinement, reported prisoners and advocates. They are also being denied access to the “canteen” (prison store) and subjected to financial fines.

The five imprisoned Palestinian journalists of Sanabel Radio – Ahmad Daraweesh, Montasser Nassar, Mohammed Imran Sous, Nidal Amro and Hamed Nammoura – released a letter from Ofer prison in which they state that the Israeli occupation military prosecution is seeking to imprison them for three years on allegations of “incitement” for their public repoting of news and information about Israeli attacks on Palestinians.

Palestinian women prisoners said that the Israel Prison Service conceded to their demands following their protests, said lawyer Taghreed Jahshan after meeting with Palestinian women prisoners in HaSharon prison on Thursday, 8 June.

Israel has arrested hundreds of Palestinians since the lone-wolf intifada began in September 2015, partly by analyzing social media posts. Authorities say these arrests are legitimate, but others see it as a grave violation of human rights.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, International Federation for Human Rights and Palestine Legal came together to write an open letter to the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, on the 37th day of a hunger strike by Palestinians in Israeli prison. The letter urged the UN to call on Israel to respect the human rights of the hunger strikers.

Addameer's attorney Farah Bayadsi visited hunger-striking political leader and Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Ahmad Sa'adat today, 14 May 2017, in Ohli Kedar prison. Addameer's attorney was previously denied visitation, but received approval following a High Court petition submitted on 10 May 2017.

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) is deeply concerned about the firing of tear gas canisters, stun grenades and bullets by Israeli forces close to the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah, the West Bank, in the early hours of Thursday morning. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the incident spread fear and panic among children and elderly patients, and staff were forced to move patients away from areas affected by tear gas.

As thousands of Palestinian prisoners are engaged in the painful self-sacrifice of a hunger strike, the recent draconian move by Israel’s Defense Minister declaring the Palestinian National Fund a terrorist organization deserves attention. This fund is the conduit by which financial support is provided to thousands of Palestinian families who had or have loved ones in Israeli jails.

Imprisoned Palestinian parliamentarian and Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, who has been leading a large-scale hunger strike in Israeli prisons, suffered from a serious deterioration of his health on Monday after forgoing food for eight days.

Marking Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, and as over 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners enter an open hunger strike for a series of demands, HadfNews published an interview with imprisoned Palestinian leader Ahmad Sa’adat, his answers received from Ramon prison, where Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is confined by the Zionist occupation.

Sheren KHALEL: "Israel cracks down on thousands of hunger strikers, as Palestinians take to the streets in mass solidarity" (Mondoweiss, April 18, 2017): click here!

Tens on thousands of Palestinians from throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip marched and attended rallies to show their support for hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. Marwan Barghouti, who is leading the strike, was palced in solitary confinement.

Marwan BARGHOUTI: "Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons" (The New York Times, April 16, 2017): click here!

HADARIM PRISON, Israel — Having spent the last 15 years in an Israeli prison, I have been both a witness to and a victim of Israel’s illegal system of mass arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners. After exhausting all other options, I decided there was no choice but to resist these abuses by going on a hunger strike.

Israel’s decades-long policy of detaining Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza in prisons inside Israel and depriving them of regular family visits is not only cruel but also a blatant violation of international law, said Amnesty International, ahead of a mass prisoner’s hunger strike beginning next week to mark Palestinian Prisoner’s Day on 17 April.

This third chapter exposes how the political and social conditions endured by Palestinians – including breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law – undermine their psychological wellbeing and cause unnecessary trauma and suffering.

Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on secret information without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. Although administrative detention is used almost exclusively to detain Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT)...

Four Palestinian institutions concerned with prisoners and human rights, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association and the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, issued their monthly report on Sunday, 9 April covering the situation in March 2017.

Amira HASS: "When the Rapist Is Also the Judge" (Haaretz, April 9, 2017): click here!

The entire Israeli military legal system that operates in the West Bank is corrupt.

Palestinian human rights groups have condemned the execution by authorities in the Gaza Strip of three civilians accused of collaborating with Israel.

"PNGO calls upon the international community: Don’t use aid to undermine legitimate Palestinian resistance" (Addameer, April 5, 2017): click here!

Palestinians, like any other people, have the right to resist foreign domination, exploitation, oppression and occupation by the means permitted under international law and the UN general assembly resolution that “Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means including armed struggle”.

For the last 25 years, Israel has imposed increasingly strict restrictions on travel to and from the Gaza Strip. Those restrictions affect nearly every aspect of life in Gaza, including the ability of human rights workers to document violations of human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL) and to advocate for their remediation.

...the authors have used the scalpel of international law and the seemingly moribund International Covenant on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid to create a new matrix of analysis of the occupation, its generative dynamics, and likely future path that will prove extremely hard for even Israel's most ardent defenders to refute in the coming years.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian society, has warmly welcomed as a “historic breakthrough” a report released today by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) that proves beyond doubt that Israel has imposed a system of apartheid on the entire Palestinian people.

Over 14,000 Arabs have had their residency rights revoked since 1967 because they were absent from Jerusalem for more than 7 years. Court ruling challenges practice that treated them like immigrants in their own city.

"Six days of unjustified detention, with full backing by the military and the courts: As usual, no one will have to answer for it" (B'Tselem, March 14 2017): click here!

On Friday, 10 February 2017, at about 4:00 P.M., some twenty to thirty young people and families with children, all residents of the village of Madama, which is located south of Nablus, went on an outing to spot a few hundred meters south of the village. At around 4:15-4:30 P.M., five or six soldiers approached from the area of the settlement of Yitzhar.

"Palestine and the Israeli Occupation: Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid, Executive Summary" (Unescwa.org, 2017): click here!

This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law".

The landmark report’s endorsement of boycotts, economic sanctions and other grassroots initiatives comes at a moment when Israel is desperately attempting to criminalize and suppress international support for Palestinian rights.

Over 6,000 Palestinian “security prisoners” were being held in Israeli prisons as of the beginning of February, according to statistics published by the Israel Prison Services (IPS). This is the highest number of Palestinian prisoners since July 2010.

There are currently 55 Palestinian females held in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, including 12 girls and 16 mothers, according to a statement from prisoners’ rights group Addameer and antiwar group CodePink. Testimonies by Palestinian women and girls highlight the brutality of the arrest process as well as conditions inside Israeli interrogation, detention and prison centers and even hospitals while in custody...

Two Palestinian teenagers held in Israel’s Ofer detention center have been shot, abused, and tortured during their detention and interrogation by Israeli authorities, according to a statement released Tuesday by the Palestinian Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs.

Confessions by Palestinians who have been tortured are regularly accepted by Israeli judges, rights groups say.

"Israel clears Palestinians and homes so its military can practice" (Defense for Children International - Palestine, Feb 6, 2017): click here!

Evictions, demolitions, and UXO (unexploded ordnance) are constant risks for Palestinian children living in areas of the Jordan Valley that Israel has declared as “firing zones,” where Israeli battalions regularly assemble to hone their combat skills. Before tanks can shoot off missile rounds and soldiers can carry out practice missions, goats are removed, animal pens and tents dismantled.

Sheren KHALEL: "‘We have nowhere else to go’: Bedouins say they will continue to rebuild as Israel carries out home demolitions at a record pace” (Mondoweiss, Jan 31, 2017): click here!

A white tent is the only structure left standing among the scattered piles of twisted metal and tarp that was a Jahalin Tribe Bedouin encampment West of Jericho city in the Wadi Qilt valley. On the morning of Wednesday, January 25th, Israeli forces escorted two bulldozers down from the main road up to the small Bedouin community.

Israel’s High Court of Justice has decided to allow the Civil Administration in the occupied West Bank to demolish eight Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills because the land is “needed” for military training purposes, Haaretz reported on Thursday. Around 1,500 Palestinians will be affected by the destruction of their homes.

For Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, 2016 was the deadliest year in the past decade. Thirty-five Palestinian children were killed by Israeli soldiers, police and armed civilians during the year, all but four of the deadly incidents taking place in the West Bank. Children account for a third of the 105 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during 2016.

The life of the Palestinian is cheap in our eyes, because our eyes are coveting his land. For his land’s real-estate value to rise in our hands, his life must be made miserable, and then his death too.

For years, the Israeli establishment has tried to conceal what happens in interrogation rooms. When interrogators use torture – or “special means,” to use the establishment’s term – the concealment efforts are redoubled.

The United Nations Security Council recently passed Resolution 2334, which condemns the construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, declares them again to be illegal, and demands a stop to any future such construction. Israel, as expected, has denounced this resolution.

West Bank children suffered the highest losses of the past decade with 32 child fatalities at the hands of Israeli forces and security guards in 2016. In Gaza, children slipped deeper into poverty, as the blockade began its ninth year, with some still living in protracted displacement.

The Israeli government and some U.S. politicians are attacking the Obama administration for permitting a recent U.N. Security Council resolution that condemns Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Secretary of State John Kerry faced further ire on Wednesday after saying the settlements threaten prospects for peace in the region.

Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teen during confrontations in a Jerusalem-area village before dawn on Thursday. Ahmad Nashat Uthman al-Kharroubi, 19, was hit in the neck with live ammunition and pronounced dead on arrival to a Ramallah hospital.

Palestinian prisoner Saddam al-Saadah was ordered to an additional four months in administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial – immediately following his scheduled release from Israeli prison on 17 December 2016.

This January, after several years of often-heated discussion and review, the Modern Language Association’s representative body, the Delegate Assembly, will consider a resolution to endorse the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Palestinian student and former prisoner, Bahaa al-Najjar, 21, was re-arrested by Israeli occupation forces on Wednesday, 9 November, only one week after his release from Israeli jails, where he had been held without charge or trial under administrative detention.

The Palestinian prisoners’ movement in 2012 conducted a battle through the open hunger strike, one of the most important moments of the struggle in recent years. This strike came in order to confront the mounting onslaught of the prison administration, the growing number of prisoners transferred to solitary confinement, the frequent and continuous transfer of the leaders of the prisoners’ movement, and the ongoing denial of family visits to the prisoners from the Gaza Strip over many years.

Recent reports continue to confirm Israel’s rampant use of torture when dealing with Palestinians, including minors. While not particularly revealing – after all, a lot of footage and photography depicting the Israeli military’s violence against Palestinian children has been widely shared on social media – it is even more disturbing when considering such brutal tactics within the confines of prisons.

Israeli forces Friday detained a 20-year-old Palestinian woman from the village of Artas near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank after the young woman underwent 12 hours of interrogation at the Etzion detention center in southern Bethlehem late Thursday.

Every time a police officer closes a store with no legal justification, it just makes it all the more clear to the local residents and the rest of the world that East Jerusalem is occupied territory by any law.

More than 220 Palestinians have been killed since a new phase of violence began last October, many shot dead in what Israel says were attacks or alleged attacks which have killed more than 30 soldiers and civilians.
Human rights groups have condemned Israel’s reflexive use of deadly force in such incidents, saying it amounts to an unofficial shoot-to-kill policy encouraged by Israel’s top leadership.

Israel's treatment of Palestinians mirrors the abominable system of apartheid in South Africa, but many members of the "international community" who fueled the gradual delegitimization and eventual collapse of South Africa's apartheid regime are failing to apply similar pressure against Israel. In fact, many nations are even strengthening their ties with the Israeli government.

On 29th August 2016 Israeli forces at Salaymeh checkpoint in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), fired rounds of tear gas as school-children attempted to make their way home through the highly militarised checkpoint.

Eitan KALINSKI: "The stark difference between Israeli and Arab schools on the same side of the separation barrier" (+972, Aug 28, 2016): click here!

Just five minutes from Kfar Saba, under full Israeli control, children from the village Arab a-Ramadin will attend a school made of clay, without electricity, and most certainly without computers. All my years as a teacher and administrator couldn’t have prepared me for this place.

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association strongly condemns the beating to death of Palestinian Ahmad Izz Halaweh by Palestinian Security Forces early Tuesday morning, 23 August 2016. Mr. Halaweh was arrested by PA Security Forces and was taken to a Nablus’ Juneid Security Compound, where he was beaten to death inside custody.

Teenage Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention centers say they have been tortured, verbally abused, kicked, and slapped by Israeli interrogators during detention and interrogation, according to a lawyer from the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners' Affairs, who recently conducted a series of visits with Palestinian teens in Israeli custody.

Family visits for Palestinian prisoners continue to come under attack by the Israeli occupation as well as under cutbacks by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). On Wednesday, 17 August, the families of Palestinian prisoners from Jerusalem protested outside ICRC headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah to demand the restoration of family visits to twice monthly.

Palestinians being held in Etzion prison were subjected to assaults, while Israeli soldiers reportedly used electric shock on a 16-year-old Palestinian prisoner, according to a statement released Thursday by the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).

A report this week said that the school in the Bedouin community of Khan al Ahmar is reportedly facing demolition by the Israeli Government. A petition by a settler group to the Israeli High Court of Justice seeking to compel the Israeli Government to execute the demolition order on the school is under review. The State has requested for and has been granted an extension until the 23 August 2016.

Over 500 rabbis call for the demolition of Palestinian homes to be stopped through an open letter addressed to the Israeli Prime Minister. Members of the Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) say that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions blatantly go against both Jewish traditions and international law.

In an interview with +972, the representative in The Hague of Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group, talks about the slew of threats she and her organization have received for months, and why she believes the Israeli government is behind them.

A 17-year-old Palestinian died on Tuesday after Israeli soldiers shot him in the chest with live ammunition during an ongoing raid on al-Fawwar refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. The slain youth, Muhammad Abu Hashhash, is the 27th Palestinian child to be killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip so far this year, according to data from Defense for Children International-Palestine.

Ayman Abbasi was beaten so badly when he was arrested his parents could barely recognise their son at the court hearing. He was held at Almaskoubia interrogation centre, released under house arrest, and then imprisoned again. In his cell Abbasi enjoyed listening to the radio to “escape” what was happening to him, but Israeli guards confiscated his headphones. Abbasi was released but on 29 November 2015 Israeli soldiers shot and killed him...

Administrative detention does not allow the accused to learn the charges against him, and therefore cannot defend himself against it. It’s a sort of parallel universe where due process doesn’t exist, and you go to jail simply because someone said so.

Tali Mayer was hit with sponge bullet, prompting her to begin to investigate the wounds caused by police use of this ammunition – tens of thousands of which have been fired at Palestinians in Jerusalem in the last two years. She photographed victims and now tells their stories.

A recent report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories was jarring. In addition to the usual listing of casualties and injuries among Palestinians, it reported a huge spike this year in the demolitions of Palestinian-owned structures by Israel.

Last week, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked promulgated a new regulation that could effectively close the country’s labor courts to Palestinian workers from the West Bank. Some 60,000 Palestinians with West Bank residency work for Israeli businesses on both sides of the Green Line, often in construction, agriculture, and service jobs.

Despite the fact that Israeli officials repeatedly alleged that Palestinian factions used human shields as a matter of policy in summer 2014, there is little to no evidence that the crime of human shields, as defined under international law, was committed by Hamas or other groups. Even if human shields were used, this would not have absolved Israel from responsibility for obeying the law.

While Israel has a responsibility to ensure that prison visits are carried out safely and securely, the authorities have imposed general limitations on Gaza families’ entry into Israel that unnecessarily hinder visits to incarcerated loved ones.

Usaid and Muhammed Qadus are shot to death in their own village by a major in the Israeli army who claims he only fired rubber bullets. But the bullets were real, and he admitted to lying and committing forgery to cover up his crime. Instead of being charged with a crime, he is promoted.

Israeli forces have continued to commit crimes, inflicting civilian casualties. They have also continued to use excessive force against Palestinian civilians participating in peaceful protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the majority of whom were youngsters. During the reporting period, Israeli forces killed 4 Palestinian civilians, including a woman and child, in the West Bank while another one succumbed to his wounds.

Is there an order to Israelis stipulating the wasting of the Palestinians’ time? Is there some supreme order: Be cruel, be heartless, humiliate?

"Israeli forces stole 21 boats and sank two more just in the last 3 months" (International Solidarity Movement, July 5, 2016): click here!

Each small boat sustains at least 20 people on average and each one of the big ones at least 100 people. That means that just in the last 3 months around 550 people lost their source of income and were left in a situation of severe food insecurity.

On June 9th, 2016, Israeli bulldozers accompanied by a squad of police officers stormed the Palestinian Bedouin village of al-Araqeeb in the Negev desert in southern Israel. For the residents, it was a familiar sight.

Israel Police are now permitted to fire live bullets as a first resort against people throwing stones or incendiary devices, including fire crackers, according to open-fire regulations that were loosened last December in light of an upsurge of violence in East Jerusalem.

"June 2016 report on Palestinian prisoners: 3412 arrested in the first half of 2016" (Samidoun, July 4, 2016): click here!

The following is a report issued by several Palestinian prisoner organizations (Prisoners Affairs Commission; Palestinian Prisoners’ Society; Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association; Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights.)

Black-clad mounted Border Police galloping into and nearly trampling a crowd of unarmed civilians, old men and women lucky enough to meet the army’s criteria to pray in Jerusalem mutely line up to pass through what look like cattle lanes. Notes on one scene of ugliness and occupation.

Four months away provide just enough distance to see the madness and the cruelty for what they are. Who has set up this crazy system and kept it running for half a century? Is it not mad to deliberately deprive human beings—families, children, the elderly– of water at the height of summer in a scorching desert? It was at least 37 or 38 degrees Centigrade, almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit, today in Al-Hadidiya. No running water, of course, and almost no water at all. You can’t survive there without water.

For the Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley that are regularly visited by MAP’s mobile clinic, displacement and dispossession have been part of life for more than sixty years. Nearly all of these communities are refugees originating from the Jahalin tribe in the Negev desert, who were expelled from their lands following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

The Israeli soldiers fired fiercely, with full intent, at the moving car, and they had no idea who was inside except for the fateful fact that they were Palestinians.

Allison DEGER: "Number of Palestinian refugees in occupied territories has increased by 1 million in the past decade" (Mondoweiss, June 22, 2016): click here!

In the last decade the number of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza has increased by one million, according to a survey conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) in advance of World Refugee Day.

"If they had any human decency, they’d let us hook up to the water pipes that run a meter from our tents" (B'Tselem, June 22, 2016): click here!

Palestinians living in the West Bank suffer from a water shortage due to Israeli policy that limits water supply throughout the year, and more so during the summer months. The shortage is particularly acute in communities that live in Area C and are unrecognized by Israel, and therefore, are not able to connect to the water supply system.

Amira HASS: "Israel Incapable of Telling Truth About Water It Steals From Palestinians" (Haaretz, June 22, 2016): click here!

Water is the only issue in which Israel (still) finds it difficult to defend its discriminatory, oppressive and destructive policy with pretexts of security and God.

Bradley BURSTON: "Israel's Plague of Darkness for Gazans Is an Act of Terrorism” (Haaretz, June 21, 2017): click here!

It's the worst thing Israel's done all year. It's a punishment which targets huge numbers of people who have committed no crime.

The purpose of the report is to provide a comprehensive overview of the underlying causes or drivers of the humanitarian vulnerabilities in the occupied Palestinian territory. In 2015, the situation continued to be characterized by violations of international humanitarian law by all parties, the systematic denial of Palestinian rights and continuing conflict, punctuated by frequent outbreaks of violence...

Each year, on April 17, Palestinians mark "Prisoners' Day', highlighting de plight of thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli jails.

Karama FADEL: "No Time To Be Children" (We Are Not Numbers, June 11, 2016): click here!

It’s the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from sun-up to sun-down, and in the sultry 80s heat, many Palestinians in Gaza sleep off the hunger until they can eat again, with the late-evening iftar meal. But 15-year-old Raouf Abdel Hameed is still toiling, selling hair ties and small toys for children on the streets of Gaza City. He’s been doing that since he was 5 years old, earning just 10 shekels (US$2.60) a day. Raouf’s parents are divorced, and without his father, they have no other source of income.

2 Palestinian civilians, including a woman, were killed, north of the West Bank. 5 civilians, including a child, were wounded in the West Bank and a 6th was wounded in the Gaza Strip.

"The Occupation's Fig Leaf: Israel's Military Law Enforcement System as a Whitewash Mechanism" (B'Tselem, Report summary, May 2016): click here!

The military law enforcement system is supposed to handle complaints filed against soldiers for harm caused to Palestinians in the West Bank, including cases of violence and gunfire that resulted in injury or death. Such harm is endemic to the occupation, which has been in place for nearly fifty years.

The increasingly violent resistance to the occupation does not give Israel and its security apparatuses a license to deny liberty to innocent people. Palestinian parliament member Khalida Jarrar was released on Friday after 14 months in an Israeli prison. Jarrar was a political detainee, and her detention was a political detention.

"Committee against Torture: Concluding observations on the fifth periodic report of Israel". The Committee against Torture considered the fifth periodic report of Israel (CAT/C/ISR/5) at its 1416th and 1419th meetings (CAT/C/SR.1416 and 1419), held on 3 and 4 May 2016, and adopted the present concluding observations at its 1428th and 1429th meetings, held on 12 May 2016" (UN, June 3, 2016): click here!

In a massive effort to tackle issues surrounding the advancement of women, social development, and non-communicable diseases, the UN Economic and Social Council adopted seven resolutions on Friday, one of which entitled “Situation of and assistance to Palestinian women.”

A group of local foundations catering for prisoners released on Thursday their monthly report on the continuous arbitrary detention of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) and the continuous violations committed against the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

2015 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2006. Between October 2015 and March 2016, more than 200 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military and Israeli settler violence, 44 of them children. UNRWA released a report this week highlighting the impact of this violent context on the mental health of Palestinian children living in refugee camps often on the frontlines.

The UNRWA blames the “blockade on Gaza and repeated cycles of armed conflict, including the unparalleled devastation caused by the last conflict in 2014”, for the destruction of “a large part of the enclave’s infrastructure, including water and sewage networks”.

"UN: High time world spoke up for rights of Palestinian refugees" (The Palestinian Information Center, May 27, 2016): click here!

The rights and dignity of Palestinians will only be realized when the world wakes up to the need for a lasting political solution for the problem of the Palestinian refugees, Commissioner General of the UN Relief Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, Pierre Krähenbühl said.

One of the leading sources of anger among Palestinians under occupation is restriction on their movement. Palestinians living in the West Bank cannot travel to the Gaza Strip, and Palestinians in Gaza are normally not allowed to leave Gaza. Travel from the occupied territories to neighboring Jordan and Egypt also involves various kinds of restrictions.

"UN Committee Against Torture recommends 50+ measures to Israel to end its use of torture" (Adalah, May 17, 2016): click here!

The Committee calls on Israel to end administrative detention, repeal the Unlawful Combatants Law, and prohibit the solitary confinement of children; emphasizes that forced feeding of hunger strikers may be torture or ill-treatment.

"Israeli water company cuts supply to Salfit" (The Palestinian Information Center, May 17, 2016): click here!

Israeli water company Mekorot on Tuesday cut off supplies to the central West Bank city of Salfit for unknown reasons, the city municipality said Monday morning.

Twenty-five Palestinian children were killed in the last three months of 2015 during a wave of anti-Israeli attacks and the number detained was the highest in seven years, the UN children's agency said on Saturday.

A 24-year-old Palestinian and her teenage brother were shot and killed by Israeli troops after allegedly trying to stab Border Police officers. The police’s version of the events doesn’t add up, but nobody in Israel, including the media, feels the need to ask questions.

Report: "No Way to Treat a Child, Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system" (Defense for Children International Palestine, April 14, 2016): click here!

No Way to Treat a Child, detailing the widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system. From meals prepared in a makeshift kitchen to adult prisoner "caregivers," the report also gives a rare glimpse into Palestinian children's daily living conditions in Israeli prisons.

(Jerusalem) – Israeli security forces are abusing Palestinian children detained in the West Bank. The number of Palestinian children arrested by Israeli forces has more than doubled since October 2015.

The Right doesn’t reject the concept of universal human rights because it threatens the Zionist project, they do so because it would mean seeing Palestinians as equals.

"Overview March 2016 [violation of the human right to water]" (Staat van Beleg, 6 april 2016): click here!

Spring has just begun and temperatures are already rising in Palestine. A long warm summer lays ahead for the Palestinian people. If we think about dealing with long and hot summers the first thing comes to mind is water which is a very important basic human right.

In its report, the committee reiterated that all 400 child prisoners held in different Israeli prisons had been subjected to more than one form of harassment and torture when they were arrested, during investigations or while they were in prison.

The IDF’s decision not to charge Abed Fatah al-Sharif’s killer with murder should not surprise anybody — it is entirely consistent with the impunity Israeli security personnel have enjoyed for decades when it comes to killing Palestinians.

"As the belligerent occupying power, Israel continues to systematically violate the inalienable rights of the Palestinians while enjoying impunity from the international community, despite numerous UN resolutions demanding an equitable and just end to the occupation," Khreisheh said.

"Six months of violence that have claimed approximately 200 Palestinian and 30 Israeli lives have arisen in a “pre-existing context” of a “decades-long occupation.” So stated Makarim Wibisono, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday."

"These demolition operations impose an intolerable reality on the residents of the communities," B'Tselem said. "This governmental policy, implemented systematically for years, constitutes the forced transfer of protected Palestinian residents within the occupied area."

In an indication of an escalating attack on Palestinian journalists and media outlets, Israeli occupation forces invaded, attacked and shut down the Palestinian satellite channel Palestine Today (Filasteen al-Yom) as well as its broadcasting company, Trans Media, and arrested three Palestinian journalists.

"In a joint report, three Palestinian institutions: the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, and the Prisoners’ Affairs Committee – said that the Israeli occupation authorities arrested 616 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza in February 2016. This number includes 140 children and 18 women and girls. The number of arrests since the beginning of the popular uprising in October 2015 has exceeded 4,120.

"The occupation has used the demolition policy as a way to put pressure on the Palestinians so to empty the region classified as Area C in the West Bank," adding that the demolitions are part of a policy of “collective punishment”. [File photo]

They said: "The withholding of the bodies also greatly adds to the grief, anxiety and trauma of the families who are dealing with the loss of a loved one, and who are also being denied their cultural and religious rights to mourn and to bury them in accordance with their faith."

Yesh Din, written by Yossi GURVITZ: "The right to own property — for Jews alone" (+972, March 4, 2016): click here!

The government never authorized the wholesale annexation of the West Bank. That’s why it’s doing it behind everyone’s backs.

"Israeli Occupation forces continue to withhold the bodies of deceased Palestinians, and renege on conditions of release" (Addameer, March 1, 2016): click here!

Addameer and Adalah view the continued withholding of the bodies of nine deceased Palestinians, the longest of which has been held by Israel for over four months, as a severe violation of international humanitarian law as well as international human rights law including violations of the right to dignity, freedom of religion, and the right to practice culture.

Israeli forces on Thursday destroyed over 40 Palestinian homes and structures in the Tubas district of the occupied West Bank as ongoing Israeli policies in the Jordan Valley continue to drive Palestinians out of their homes.

Approximately 700 Palestinian children under the age of 18 from the occupied West Bank are prosecuted every year through Israeli military courts after being arrested, interrogated and detained by the Israeli army. The most common charge levied against children is throwing stones, a crime that is punishable under military law by up to 20 years in prison. Since 2000, more than 12,000 Palestinian children have been detained.

The Detainees and Ex-Detainees Committee, said in a report published on Sunday, that 85 percent of Palestinians who were killed by Israel since the beginning of 2015 (179 Palestinians), were killed in extrajudicial field executions.

More than half a million Israeli settlers live in 237 settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Successive Israeli governments have facilitated this process, even though settlements are unlawful under international humanitarian law and are part and parcel of Israeli policies that dispossess, discriminate against, and abuse the human rights of Palestinians.

"Israel Arresting Palestinian Children and Keeping Them In Outdoor Cages During The Winter" (CounterCurrent News, Jan 16, 2016): click here!

Following a November 2015 report by the Independent, in which it quoted NGO rights organization the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC) that at least 600 Palestinian children have been arrested in Jerusalem alone in the first half of 2015 and that roughly 40% were sexually abused, a new January 2016 report was also issued by the Independent, this time saying that the Israeli government is torturing and keeping them in outdoor cages during winter time.

The decision to outlaw the northern wing of the Islamic Movement in Israel was announced by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on Nov 17, 2015, days after attacks claimed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (or ISIS) left 130 dead in Paris. Although the ban had been long in the making, the timing was patently opportunistic, with Netanyahu even comparing Israel’s Islamic Movement to ISIS."

Israel uses the Erez crossing as a trap for Palestinian passengers, the Human Rights and Democracy Media Centre (SHAMS) reported yesterday. SHAMS noted that this undermines the rights of movement and travel for Palestinians who have been under a strict siege for a decade.

British parliament held a debate on the issue of child prisoners and detainees in the Occupied Palestinian Territories for the second time yesterday, following a debate on the issue in 2010. The debate was procured by Sarah Champion MP, who began by addressing the ill-treatment meted out to Palestinian children detained by the Israeli military as documented by two damning reports showing that Israel was in breach of its legal obligations under the UN convention on the rights of the child and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Sherna BERGER GLUCK (ed.): "Impediments to Education in the Occupied Palestinian Territories". Introduction by
Sa'ed Atshan. A publication of the Palestine-Israel Working Group of Historians Against the War (HAW), September 2016 (pdf, 34 p.): click here!

The Israeli parliament has recently approved a law that allows the sentencing of up to 20 years in prison for Palestinians who throw stones, individuals who are usually minors. This development was followed by a law that would allow for the imprisonment of Palestinian children as young as 12, if they are found guilty of “nationalistically-motivated” violent offences.

The swimmer's name was Ishaq Khalil Hassan, and he is a 28-year-old from Gaza who had reportedly spent the last few months trying to get permission to leave the tiny Palestinian coastal enclave in order to seek medical treatment abroad.

“Punitive” demolitions, which have become a trademark of Israel’s latest round of repression against the Palestinians of the Occupied Territory, are not only a pointless lashing out against defenseless families, but are downright counterproductive, even by Israel’s own standards.

The Corries won't give up, continuing to draw attention to the occupation, and the barbaric practice of demolition. - In 2003, a 23-year-old American from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death by a bulldozer operated by two members of the Israeli Defense Forces.

International law is clear that prisoners should not be transferred outside of an occupied territory — both to allow their families access to them and to prevent forced population transfer. But that’s not all that’s at stake.

"UN: 177 countries vote in support of the right of Palestinians to self-determination" (Palestine News Network, Dec 18, 2015): click here!

Gravely concerning at continued reports that human rights defenders in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in Hebron, are being subjected to physical attacks and death threats, United Nations independent experts today denounced such harassment as “unacceptable” and called for it to end immediately.

Gideon LEVY: "Demolished, Rebuilt and Razed Again: A Bedouin Community Left Without Shelter". Israeli officials visit the tiny Jordan Valley village of Al Hadidya almost daily to destroy anything that can be used as protection against the cold - including tents donated by relief organizations (Haaretz, Dec 11, 2015): click here!

The sheer inhumanity of it is breathtaking. ...This is the province of Israeli demolition and expulsion, the district of ethnic cleansing. As in the South Hebron Hills, here, too, in the occupied rift valley, Israel is trying to expel everyone it can in order to facilitate future annexation. And what could be an easier target for expulsion and abuse than the lowest denizens on the food chain of Palestinian helplessness – these communities of Bedouin shepherds?

Hatem BAZIAN: "The Palestinian cause and international law". As Israel's right wing tries to Judaise Jerusalem, Palestinians are looking to international law (Al Jazeera, Nov 9, 2015): click here!

The Palestinian quest for international recognition took another major step forward when 107 nations voted to admit Palestine as a full member to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian dead, and its impact on the living, is being questioned once again as the government continues to withhold the bodies of 22 Palestinians killed following attacks on Israelis during the month of October.

...The possible crimes most important to investigate, from both legal and moral perspectives, do not involve decisions by gunship pilots or squad leaders to attack particular targets. They involve decisions by the political and military leadership of Israel, setting the strategic goals of the conflict and choosing the means and methods by which those goals would be sought. If, as available evidence suggests, those political and strategic choices, based on long-standing doctrine and declared policy, authorized and validated grave violations of the law, responsibility for the resulting violations should start with the leaders.

There are Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip without legal status; their identification cards are not recognized by Israel for various reasons, nor do they have official status in any other country. In fact, those Palestinians bear the “Blue ID,” which is nothing more than a personal identification card that classifies its holder as “stateless.”

On 5 October 2015, the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) shot dead 13-year old Palestinian boy Abdel Rahman Abdallah near Bethlehem. Abdel’s death came in the wake of Israel’s killing of Hutheifa Suleiman (18 years) and Fadi Alloun (19 years) on 4 October. During the same time period, approximately 450 Palestinians were injured across the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).

"“This killing is the latest in a long line of unlawful killings carried out by the Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank with near total impunity,” Amnesty said."

"The EU Must Address the Palestinian Right of Return" (ECCP, 20 September, 2015): click here!

European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine: To the attention of Mr Jean Asselborn – Minister of Foreign and European Affairs. "As Luxembourg holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union during the second semester of 2015 and presides over the work of the Council of the EU, it holds a unique opportunity to play a key role in the EU’s approach towards the situation in the Middle East, in particular with regard to Palestinian refugees. This is crucial now because of the context of the refugee crisis gaining ever-increasing attention".

"Cash shortages at UNRWA distract from the wider issue: it is the lack of a diplomatic solution, not funding, that leaves Palestinian refugees vulnerable".

Natasha ROTH: "Israel is pulling the West Bank out from under Palestinian feet" (+972, September 11, 2015): click here!

"With over 14,000 demolition orders issued against Palestinian structures in Area C since 1988, Israel is maintaining a vast system of control-by-threat that at once dispossesses and undermines social stability".

"In August Israel demolished the homes of 228 people, 124 of them minors, leaving them with no shelter. In August, the Civil Administration and the military went on a demolition rampage in 29 villages and communities throughout Area C".

"No issue has been so much at the heart of the Palestine cause, or so resistant to resolution, as the right of return. Palestinians world wide see it as the basis of their case. Enshrined in international law and historical precedent, it has acquired an almost sacred quality for Palestinians, an untouchable right that no one can dispute. Generations of refugees have been reared on the expectation of return to their homeland. Their position derives not only from natural justice, but is also underpinned legally by UN Resolution 194, passed by the General Assembly in December 1948".

Salwa DUAIBIS: "The devastating effects of night raids on Palestinian families" IDF night raids, an everyday occurrence in the occupied territories, ensure that Palestinians cannot feels safe in the one place where safety should be assured. (+972, 31 August 2015): click here!

"Perhaps the most devastating impact these raids have is on the children. Mothers report that their children have problems sleeping after experiencing a night raid. Some children become aggressive, others wet their beds. No one feels safe in the one place where safety should be assured. According to a recent report by WCLAC, it is estimated that the military conducts nearly 1,400 night raids each year, with over 65,000 since military law was imposed on the West Bank in 1967".

"A United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) report on Palestine’s Gaza Strip concludes that infant mortality has risen for the first time in decades. A significant marker for a dangerous trend says UNRWA Director of Health Dr. Akihiro Seita. Infant mortality is but one of numerous health and mental health indicators, suggesting that the tragic state of health in Palestine is an artifact of the blockade on Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank, and the lack of possibilities for Palestine to develop a sound economy".

JERUSALEM (Ma'an): UN officials on Tuesday slammed a recent spate of Israeli home demolitions east of Jerusalem and called for an immediate freeze on demolitions across the occupied West Bank. Israeli forces on Monday demolished 22 structures belonging to the Jahalin Bedouin community in eastern Jerusalem, leaving 78 Palestinians homeless, including 49 children, the UN Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said in a joint statement.

Bradley BURSTON: "It’s time to admit it. Israeli policy is what it is: Apartheid." "I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. Not anymore" (Medium.com: Haaretz, August 17, 2015): click here!

"Israel's restrictions on Palestinians' freedom of movement in the West Bank are enforced by a system of fixed checkpoints, surprise flying checkpoints, physical obstructions, roads on which Palestinians are forbidden to travel, and gates along the Separation Barrier. The restrictions enable Israel to control Palestinian movement throughout the West Bank as suits its interests, in a sweeping breach of Palestinians' rights. [...] Israel's policy is based on the premise that every Palestinian is a security threat, thus justifying restrictions on the person's freedom of movement. This racist assumption brings with it the sweeping violation of human rights of an entire population based on national origin. As such, the policy flagrantly breaches international law."

"In two court decisions involving shoving Palestinians off their land, Supreme Court justices have confirmed what Israel’s critics are saying: that Israel has been a colonialist entity since 1948...The justices dismissed the petition challenging the application of the Absentee Property Law in their case, thus continuing the tradition from the 1950s. That is when we coined the oxymoron “present absentees” in order to facilitate the demolition of villages and robbery of land of Palestinians that remained, those that we failed to expel. In the justices’ consent to the demolition of Sussia and Umm al-Hiran, they have drawn a direct line linking 1948 to today. They have confirmed what Israel’s most virulent critics say about the country – that it is a colonialist, dispossessing entity. The justices have parroted what the state has been screaming all along: It’s my right to dispossess, my right to expel, my right to demolish and crowd people into pens. I have demolished and will continue to do so. I have expelled and will continue to expel. I have crowded people in and will continue to do so. I never gave a damn and never will do."

Throughout Palestine, prisons are a major site in which the struggle for education, among other basic human rights, is tirelessly waged. Roughly 20% of Palestinians have been incarcerated, constituting as much as 40% of the male population. Many are students whose right to an education suffer enormously once imprisoned.

In her new book "Captive Revolution", Nahla Abdo talks to Palestinian women imprisoned within the Israeli prison system and analyses the apparent gendered forms of oppression and resistance in such extreme conditions. For this article in time for the book’s publication, she discusses the concept of the entire Gaza Strip as a prison colony, and reveals the attitude of the Palestinian people who resist within it.

Eva ILLOUZ: "47 Years a Slave: A New Perspective on the Occupation" (Haaretz, Feb 7, 2014): click here!

Very few struggles in history have centered on how a nation should treat a third group of people, but there are strong parallels between black slavery and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Israeli policies in the West Bank harshly discriminate against Palestinian residents, depriving them of basic necessities while providing lavish amenities for Jewish settlements, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report identifies discriminatory practices that have no legitimate security or other justification and calls on Israel, in addition to abiding by its international legal obligation to withdraw the settlements, to end these violations of Palestinians' rights.

When some 60 leading Israeli actors and playwrights signed a letter stating they would refuse to play in the new theatre in Ariel, one of Israel’s largest settlements, the attacks from Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel’s Minister of Culture and Sport and many others were swift and intense. Over 150 leading Israeli academics and writers- including Amos Oz and David Grossman- came to their defense.

"The Status of Palestinian Citizens in Israel". Pax Christi International 16 February 2004. Written statement for the UN Human Rights Commission (The Electronic Intifada, 16 Feb, 2004): click here!

Pax Christi International wishes to draw attention to the situation of Palestinian citizens inside Israel within the borders of 1948. The focus of the Arab- Israeli conflict is mostly on Palestinians of the Occupied Territories and to a lesser degree on those Palestinians who live inside Israel. In essence, their situation has many similarities with the situation of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

Nearly one in four of Israel's 1.6 million schoolchildren are educated in a public school system wholly separate from the majority. The children in this parallel school system are Israeli citizens of Palestinian Arab origin. Their schools are a world apart in quality from the public schools serving Israel's majority Jewish population.

Gideon LEVY: "So These Are Israel's New Heroes?"Israel's recent military operations in Palestinian hospitals are a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, and make you wonder how low the country can sink (Haaretz, Nov 21, 2015).

Noam SHEIZAF: "Jerusalem, in context"(+972, October 19, 2015). "The current events in Jerusalem have a political history and context. Attempts to attribute the violence to some kind of Palestinian pathology while ignoring other factors is a recipe for making things worse."